Conventional cancer therapy is based on the use of drugs and/or radiation which kills replicating cells, hopefully faster than the agents kill the patient's normal cells. Surgery is used to reduce tumor bulk, but has little impact once the cancer has metastasized. Radiation is effective only in a localized area.
The treatments can in themselves kill the patient, in the absence of maintenance therapy. For example, for some types of cancer, bone marrow transplants have been used to maintain the patient following treatment with otherwise fatal amounts of chemotherapy. Efficacy has not been proven for treatment of solid tumors, however. “Cocktails” of different chemotherapeutic agents and combinations of very high doses of chemotherapy with restorative agents, for example, granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor (“GM-CSF”), erythropoietin, thrombopoetin granulocyte stimulating factor, (“G-CSF”), macrophage colony stimulating factor (“M-CSF”) and stem cell factor (“SCF”) to restore platelet and white cell levels, have been used to treat aggressive cancers. Even with the supportive or restrictive therapy, side effects are severe.
Other treatments have been tried in an attempt to improve mortality and morbidity. Vaccines to stimulate the patient's immune system have been attempted, but not with great success. Various cytokines, alone or in combination, such as tumor necrosis factor, interferon gamma, and interleukin-2 (“IL-2”) have been used to kill cancers, but have not produced cures. More recently, anti-angiogenic compounds such as thalidomide have been tried in compassionate use cases and shown to cause tumor remission. In animal studies, compounds inducing a procoagulant state, such as an inhibitor of protein C, have been used to cause tumor remission. New studies have shown that soluble cytokine receptors, such as tumor necrosis factor receptors (“TNF-Rs”) which are released in a soluble form from tumor cells, in high concentrations relative to normal cells, may restore the immune system's attack on the tumor cells (Jablonska and Peitruska, Arch. Immunol. Ther. Exp. (Warsz) 1997, 45(5-6), 449-453; Chen, et al., J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 1997, 56(5), 541-550).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,713 to Lentz describes an alternative method for treating cancer, involving ultrapheresis to remove compounds based on molecular weight, which promotes an immune attack on the tumors by the patient's own white cells.
Despite all of these efforts, many patients die from cancer; others are terribly mutilated. It is unlikely that any one therapy will be effective to cure all types of cancer.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and system for treatment of solid tumors.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and compositions that does not involve non-selective, extremely toxic, systemic chemotherapy.